Iona's Milan Prodanovic

In his three seasons at Iona, Milan Prodanovic has experienced far more downs than ups. There was the nightmarish 2-28 season in his freshman season that introduced him to the college game. Last season there was improvement, but still just 12 wins in 32 decisions and this year there are 12 victories again, although the Gaels (12-18) have been snake-bitten to a degree, losing seven games by three points or less.

The one other thing still missing from Prodanovic's resume, and almost everyone else's on the Gaels roster, is that elusive first win in the MAAC tournament. Two straight years of one-and-done has left Prodanovic and the Gaels starving for postseason victory. And it's that hunger that the junior guard hopes will translate into a win against Marist in Iona's first-round MAAC tournament game Friday night.

"Me, Alejo (Rodriguez), Devon (Clarke) and Ra (Rashon Dwight), we have nothing but losses," said Prodanovic, the Gaels' three-point leader with 53 three-balls this season. "Me and Ra were talking about it the other night, about how bad we want to get this win. We want to turn this thing around. We want to win more than anything."

Senior forward Gary Springer is the only current player on the Gaels' roster to have experienced victory in the postseason. Springer was a member of the 2004-05 team that won a pair of MAAC tournament games before his 2005-06 team won the MAAC title and advanced to the NCAA tournament. (Senior Devon Clarke was a member of the '05-'06 team but appeared in only two games that season).

"The only win this team has in the tournament is Gary's and that was three years ago," Iona coach Kevin Willard said. "That tells you what we're dealing with."

When Iona, the tournament's seventh seed, tips off against 10th-seeded Marist (sometime around 10 p.m. Friday night), it will be anything but a cakewalk for the Gaels. In their two meetings with the Red Foxes this season, Iona dropped a 51-50 decision in Poughkeepsie on Dec. 5 before needing overtime to top Marist, 66-65, at the Hynes Center on Feb. 7. Marist clearly is a dangerous opponent for Iona.

"Each game was decided by one point so I think we're very evenly matched teams," Willard said. "Both teams play hard, both play good defense and each team goes through periods in the game where they struggle to score."

Iona isn't exactly coming into the tournament on a high. After their loss to Loyola last Sunday, the Gaels closed out the season 2-8 in their final 10 games. Not the way you want to gear up for what Iona hopes is a long tournament run.

"The regular season is over but the season is far from over," sophomore guard Rashon Dwight said. "We just have to bring the same intensity and energy and play together and I believe we still can do it."

But the one thing the Gaels have to do - if given the opportunity - is find a way to put teams away when they have them down. There have been countless times this season when Iona would open up sizeable leads on its opponent only to let them climb back into the game and, ultimately, overtake the Gaels. It's a practice Iona can ill afford now that it's tournament time.

"That killer instinct has definitely been lacking," Prodanovic said. "There's been a lot of games where we'd be up 10 with 3:00 left in the half and we'd lose it. Same thing at the end of some games. We need to be able to close out an opponent. Instead of a 10-point lead turning into a two-point game, we need to make it an 18-point or a 20-point game. We need to capitalize on those situations, separate us from the other team."

If the Gaels can knock off Marist, they would have Niagara, the No. 2 seed, waiting for them in Saturday night's quarterfinals. The Gaels and Purple Eagles split their season series so anything can happen. But first Iona needs to nail down that first tournament win in Albany this weekend. That elusive one Prodanovic and Co. are still searching for.

"We have a lot of freshmen on this team who have never experienced a tournament win but they have never experienced a tournament loss, either," Prodanovic said. "When they roll the ball out we'll see what happens. But my feeling is the team is anxious to play, we're hungry. And I definitely think we have all the ingredients to win up there."